Main menu

Pages

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Sausage and Basil Marinara Sauce for the Freezer, Made with Fresh Tomatoes

I love this amazing Sausage and Basil Marinara Sauce

If you happened to catch my final garden update this weekend, you know why I've been frantically making things like roasted tomatoes, Gazpacho, and now marinara sauce! My garden is simply overflowing with tomatoes. That means it's time to make this sauce, my all-time favorite pasta sauce, and something I've been making for years. If you come to my house in the winter and open the upright freezer, you'll see square containers like the ones below filled with this sauce. I'll eat it served over Zucchini Noodles for a low-carb dinner, or with whole wheat or Dreamfield's pasta, but this would be great with any pasta if you're not on a diet. It's something I never get tired of.

This is a very flexible recipe. I call for fresh tomatoes, but if you don't have them available, you can use canned, diced tomatoes and still get a good result. I recommend Muir Glen organic canned tomatoes; I think they're definitely the most flavorful canned tomatoes I've had. I use turkey Italian Sausage in this to make it South Beach Diet friendly, but pork sausage would taste great too. I used a combination of dried and fresh herbs for more depth of flavor, but you could still make a pretty good sauce even if you only have dried herbs. I add a lot of fresh basil, but if you don't have a good supply of fresh basil like I do, you could get by with a lot less. Please, please, please, don't skip the fennel. That's one of the things that makes this sauce over-the-top good.

Here are the steps to make Sausage and Basil Marinara Sauce with Fresh Tomatoes. (Complete recipe at the end. These photos are double the amounts of the recipe.)

Peel ripe tomatoes (instruction below), and chop into pieces. Roma tomatoes are best, but I roasted most of my Romas, so this batch of sauce was made with Celebrity tomatoes.

Brown turkey sausage well in a small amount of olive oil. Don't rush this step. Add the sausage to the sauce, scraping out all the browned bits. Simmer 2-3 more hours.

When sauce has thickened to desired consistency, add a generous amount of chopped fresh basil, a little fresh oregano, and a bit of olive oil and simmer 10-15 minutes more. This has reduced so much I actually put it into a smaller pan to get a better photo, and the flavor is great.

Sausage and Basil Marinara Sauce with Fresh Tomatoes(Makes 8-10 cups of sauce, recipe created by Kalyn)

Instructions:
To peel tomatoes: Bring a deep pot of water to a slight boil. Wash tomatoes, then cut a V into the top of each tomato, cutting away stem area. Put tomatoes with stem area removed into boiling water 1-2 minutes. Remove tomatoes to cutting board, and peel off skin, which should come off easily. If it doesn't slip right off, leave tomatoes in boiling water a tiny bit longer. I do 4-5 tomatoes at a time, and usually let them cool for a minute or two before peeling them.

Heat 1-2 T olive oil in a large frying pan. Squeeze sausage out of casing and brown, breaking up with heavy turner or potato masher, until sausage is well browned. Add browned sausage to sauce mixture and simmer 2-3 hours more.

Add olive oil, fresh oregano and fresh basil to sauce and simmer 10-15 minutes. Let sauce cool before refrigerating or freezing. This sauce will keep for close to a year in the freezer if it is stored in a plastic container with a tight fitting lid.

South Beach Suggestions:
Every low-glycemic ingredient in this sauce is friendly for all phases of the South Beach Diet. This would be perfect served over Zucchini Noodles for Phase One, or serve over whole wheat or Dreamfields pasta for phase 2 or 3.

Nutritional Information?

I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight using The Glycemic Index partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you.

Posts may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and Kalyn's Kitchen earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

Posts may include links to my affiliate account at Amazon.com, and this blog earns a few cents on the dollar if readers purchase the items I recommend, so thanks for supporting my blog when you shop at Amazon!

I love the turkey sausage - I get mine at Whole Foods and have some in the freezer. But my garden has no fressh tomatoes. Should be able to find some at one of the local markets about now. Maybe enough to make my BLT also.Looks lovely.

That looks like great sauce there! I always feel "rich" when I have a freezer full of homemade sauce. It tastes so much better than any bottled sauce from the store, and it saves the day when you exhausted.

I made the sauce last night, used chicken sausage instead, since I don't eat turkey. I think my sauce turned out a little sour. I made the full recipie, can I add something else to it to decrease it's sourness.

Anonymous I can't think of anything that would make this taste sour, unless it was the type of tomatoes you used. You could add sugar if you're not a SB dieter. Otherwise I have no idea why that might happen. Mine has never been sour at all.

Hey Kalyn--I made this sauce yesterday, and followed your directions right down to the fennel. I couldn't find whole Roma tomatos at the Whole Foods near me, so I went with the Muir Glen, as suggested. Results were astronomically good. Found your recipe through sheer chance when I googled "sausage marinara." Your photos sold me, and I was completely rewarded for my faith. Had to impress a certain someone with long red hair yesterday, and did so handily thanks to your sauce. Bravo.

My wife had a good point as I considered making this recipe... Make the saucethaw - leave out the sausage... cook and add sausage at the time of serving (in winter after thawing sauce). Keeps sausage fresh. -steve

Steve, you can certainly do it that way, but it wouldn't be my preference. I like the way the sausage flavors the sauce as it cooks. Your choice though, I'm always happy to let people adapt my recipes any way that suits them!

This looks like a great recipe. I am just curious though ... at this time of year where there are tons of fresh tomatoes on hand, why do you mix fresh tomatoes with can tomatoes in this recipe? Can't one just go with fresh tomatoes?

I have a huge pot of this on the stove that's been simmering for over four hours. It looks great. Can't wait to dive in. Regarding using all fresh tomatoes--I've been making my own fresh sauce at least once a week but it's never enough to freeze. By adding the Muir Glen, it gives me enough so that my family and I can't possibly eat it all within a day or two. Also, there's only so many tomatoes that I am willing to scald and peel in one day.

I wouldn't make it in a crockpot, because it's the long slow simmering that thickens the sauce and adds flavor. You might be able to cook it part of the time in a crockpot though, and then put in a regular pan and simmer to thicken at the end.

I LOVE this sauce! I have to admit I was a little leery about including the fennel and the bay leaves but they really bring out the flavor of the sausage.

Although the recipe does not need anything else I did add some yellow and green bell pepper diced really fine(I think my family does not get enough veggies and try to add when I can), some of your slow roasted tomatoes diced, and a handful of chopped kalamata olives. I used a mixture of spicy and sweet turkey sausage but in hindsight I wish I used all spicy.

Thanks for joining the conversation! I love hearing from readers and even though I can't always reply to every comment, I will always answer specific questions on a recipe as soon as possible. Sometimes I'm answering by iPhone, so my replies may be short!

Comments don't appear on the blog until they're approved by me, so no need to try again if you don't see it when you post the comment! Please make your signature a link to your site if you're a blogger, but other links posted within the body of the comment will never be published.

Food Blogger Love!

Copyright Notice

All Photos and Original Text (C) Copyright: 2005-2015, By Kalyn's Kitchen® LLC. I grant permission for photos and recipe links to be copied to social media and other sites, but not recipe text. All Other Rights Reserved. (Other bloggers may post their adapted version of any recipe found here, with their own photos and recipe text, but please link back to the original inspiring recipe on this site.)

Kalyn's Kitchen is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.